PowerPoint is a necessary evil... everybody is expected to give presentations in it, but few people are good at it. They cram too much information into one slide, and pack them full of data that might better go in a report. Presentations work best when used to persuade, it's an awkward tool when you try to educate. There's a reason PowerPoint was banned by the Pentagon:

"PowerPoint is dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control" -- Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster

But alas... we're still stuck with PowerPoint... so we should probably make the best of it!

One of the ways to make PowerPoint presentations more compelling is to tell a story... unfortunately, most people are pretty bad at telling stories as well. There's an entire industry created around corporate storytelling that trains people how to engage your audience with a full-fledged story... but there's an even simpler approach. The creators of South Park stumbled on a formula that they still use to assemble stories:

These same rules can apply to making a PowerPoint presentation flow like a story.

You initially assemble your main points -- which is usually the hard part. Then, when assembling your points to tell a story, try to transition between your points with the word "therefore," or the word "but." Like so:

Slide 1

therefore...

Slide 2

but...

Slide 3

therefore...

Slide 4

but...

Simple, no? You'll be surprised how much better your presentations will "flow" from one point to the next with this method.

Naturally, not all presentations can fit into this pattern... for example, "Top 10" presentations flow numerically from one point to another... so if people doze off they can pick up the next chunk at the start. Also, there may be times where the dreaded "and then" transition is needed, such as when a point needs to be communicated over several slides.

Nevertheless, if you try hard to use better transitions, your story will be more compelling, and PowerPoint will be one notch less evil.